Troublesome Turd (a true story)

Imagine my mother (if you can), hair in curlers, wielding a plunger like some sort of impromptu shepherd's staff, rounding up her four children and herding them into the bathroom for a bizarre family meeting. There we stood around the toilet, five of us looking down into the bowl at the most enormous "dropping" I had ever seen. It was impressive. As someone who loved the Guinness Book of World Records, my immediate thought was to call up those guys and have them bring either a ruler or a scale to get the stats on that baby. I was sure we would be famous very soon. I was almost going to suggest that mother get her camera, but I realized that she was angry.

She was angry, not because the culprit didn't flush the toilet after doing his/her business, but because it was so big, it wouldn't go down the toilet. She proved her point by repeatedly flushing the toilet. It spun around and around and never went anywhere. She aimed the plunger at each of us, demanding to know who did it. Who dropped that huge turd that was far too big to flush? I wondered if she was going to hack at it with something as we watched, but she just kept demanding to know who did it.

My eldest brother, I suppose because he was the eldest and a boy, got the blame, despite his protestations. From that day, I viewed my brother as some sort of super pooper (wasn't that an ABBA song?) We were released from the smelly room and I gather my mother used the plunger to batter that turd into small enough pieces that it would go down. I was left thinking that she was a bit unfair to us. After all, who among us can regulate the size of our movements? I'd wager that few of us can, and ever fewer would admit to having the talent.

About five years ago, my sister made a confession to me. She said, somewhat gleefully and through bursts of laughter, that she was the one who did it. With one sentence, she turned everything upside down. She destroyed that image of my brother as a mythical pooper and she made me re-evaluate girls. It took me a while to process the information. I thought she should tell my mother, but then she has probably forgotten about the whole thing by now.

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